Iets lekkers met een bite!

Oh, what a happy birthday I had last time. One of the many awesome gifts I received, was the first cook book that stemmed from BBC’s The Great British Bake Off — which just so happens to be one of my favorite tv shows. I can not even begin to explain why this book is so great and how many amazing recipes it contains. However, here’s a little peek of the chocolate crinkles, a cookie I had never had before. It slightly resembles the more crunchy corners of a brownie, and can be considered the love child of a brownie & cookie.

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When I’m saying ‘I am baking some cookies’, it is really just an alibi to get myself a candy bar-like treat like this one. This recipe will get you the finest candy bar money can buy, so don’t just buy the pre-packed stuff: If you are going to sin, make it worth it.

Start of by baking a shortbread base (this is the ‘cookies’-part), and while it cools, make some caramel and throw it on top with some delicious crunchy nuts. Cashews, peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts…basically, any kind you prefer. They all work terrifically with caramel. If you’re a salted caramel fan, you could use ready-salted nuts, or just throw on some sea salt yourself. Your friends will ‘hate’ you for serving these…if these little sweet devils even make it out of your kitchen.

Ingredients:

– 150 g butter (slightly softened)

– 100 g sugar

– 250 g all-purpose flour

– pinch of salt

For the caramel:

– 340 g sugar

– 240 ml cream

– 80 g butter

– and about 200 g of nuts

I wouldn’t dare telling you how many portions these amounts will yield, because it largely depends on a) how much of the ingredients mysteriously disappear from your work space and b) what size you cut the portions.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Line a baking pan or any kind of (deep) oven tray with foil (I used a lasagna pan of about 30×20 cm), and grease it with some melted butter.

To make the shortbread base, first mix the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Then, add the flour and salt.

Get the dough in the pan. To make things easier (because it will be sticky), you could use a piece of microwave wrap to press down the dough equally.

Bake the shortbread base until golden brown. The timing differs greatly depending on how thick you made it and of course also on your oven. I think mine took about 20 minutes.

While the shortbread cools, heat the sugar in a nonstick saucepan. Let it stand until the bottom layer of sugar begins to melt, and ONLY THEN start stirring, continuing to stir until the sugar has turned light brown in color and smooth in texture. Pour in the cream and stir constantly until the mixture is smooth again, about 5 minutes. Turn down the heat and stir in the butter. Please RESIST the urge to stick in a finger to have a sneak taste, because you will lose its skin due to the incredible heat of the caramel.

Throw the nuts on the shortbread, pour the caramel over, and let it all cool for at least two hours, or until it has set. Cutting the bars may be tricky, but can be made easier by keeping the pan in the refridgerator.

Oatmeal cookies may be just as famous as the legendary chocolate chip, but they’re not in the Netherlands. We use oatmeal to make porridge, and that’s about it. That is why I wanted to try a little baking with oatmeal myself, and naturally I started with cookies. Like I wrote in one of my previous posts, I am almost religiously in favor of crunchy cookies: This led me to this recipe on SmittenKitchen, a deliciously inspiring baking blog. I made some minor changes, converted the volume amounts to SI units and tried & tested a few variations. I hope you like them, and that you will share your own variations in the comments below!

Ingredients:

– 1 cup / 128 g all-purpose flour

– 1 teaspoon baking powder

– 1/4 teaspoon salt

– 1 3/4 sticks / 200 g butter (slightly softened)

– 1 cup / 200 g sugar

– 1/4 cup packed / 50 g light brown sugar

– 1 large egg

– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

– 2 1/2 cups / 225 g old-fashioned rolled oats

– 6 ounces / 170 g white chocolate, chopped

– + 1/2 cup / 70 g hazelnuts

You can play around with the addition of chocolate and nuts. I have tried these two varieties and my friends and family loved them.

Variety 1:

1/2 cup / 75 g white chocolate

+ 1/2 cup / 70 g toasted hazelnuts

+ 70 g ‘kandijsuiker’ : These are very crunchy sugar crystals, I’m not sure about a non-Dutch equivalent… Basically, you could use anything sweet and crunchy

Variety 2:

1/2 cup / 70 g toasted almonds

+ 1/4 cup / 70 g peanut butter

+ 50 g ‘kandijsuiker’

These amounts will yield about 24 portions (2 tablespoons of dough each). Bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celcius for 13-16 minutes.

When I visited the U.K. last year, my colleagues at the University of Bristol had just planned a bake sale. Everyone would bake something at home, and everyone was buying stuff off each other (for themselves, or kids, neighbors, grandparents etc) with all the proceedings going to a good cause that the organizing team picked (the organization alternated). I loved it so much, I am still determined to introduce bake sales in the work place back here in the Netherlands. One of the guys had made millionaires’ shortbread, which is basically the same as chocolate caramel shortbread, but that doesn’t sound nearly as magnificent. He used a recipe from Waitrose, which is an upmarket chain of British supermarkets.

If you’re not baking for any sale, make sure you could stand to gain a few pounds, because millionaires’ shortbread will make you want to eat the whole batch and gain a million.

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Here in The Netherlands, there’s not an awful lot of variation going when it comes to peanut butter. We have your regular peanut butter sandwich, and we use peanut butter to make an Indonesian peanut (sateh) sauce. That’s about it.

Just thinking about combining peanut butter with sweets like, say, chocolate, makes many shiver — even though they are familiar with Snickers candy bars. But I’m always willing to try new stuff, so when Pinterest inspired me to bake these cookies, I was pretty happy with the result. As you can see in the second picture (in the back), the first batch was thicker than the second, which resulted in a American-style chewy cookie. The second, thinner batch packed more crunch, which I personally prefer.

Ingredients:

133 g flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

96 g butter

210 g peanut butter

144 g granulated sugar

85 g light brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp milk

vanilla extract/a vanilla pod

75 g chocolate chips (optional)

Bake these babies at 175 degrees Celsius for 10-12 minutes. I baked them in a cupcake/muffin pan so they would get that perfect round shape.

In my experience, in the US, especially the larger cookies are often kind of soft. I think chocolate chip cookies should always be crispy, which is why this is my favourite recipe.

Ingredients:

142 g flour + a pinch of salt

102 g butter

1 egg

160 g white muscovado sugar (a.k.a. bastard sugar)

80 g nuts (walnuts/hazelnuts/macademia/pine nuts or a combination; you can do whatever you like, go nuts!)

160 g chocolate chips (milk or dark)

Knead together the flour, butter, egg and sugar, and then add the chopped nuts and chocolate chips. Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 13 minutes. Keep an eye on these babies, because the baking process can go really fast, depending on the temperature of the dough and thickness of the cookies.

And here’s a few tips: If you like some extra sweet & crunchy bits, replace part of the chocolate chips with white chocolate chips. And if you’re a bit of a neat freak, and you want your cookies perfectly round and evenly sized, you can bake them in a muffin pan.